Introduction

Super Dead is a superhero-horror roleplaying game that takes place in a zombie-apocalypse world caused by the U.S. Navy's botched attempt to prevent World War 3. In this game, you will take the role of a mutant-powered survivor and attempt to make what you can out of the end of the world.

You will gather supplies, rescue survivors, and face off against villains, while staying one step ahead of the ever present zombie threat.

Super Dead is designed to be rules-light and intuitive, encouraging quick, narrative-driven decision making, inspired by the New School Revolution (See also: What is the NSR?) in tabletop gaming as well as modern tactical war games.

Everything you need to play can be found in this ruleset.

The rules to Super Dead are free under the license CC BY-SA 4.0

Quick Start: 28 Rules Later

If you're an experienced TTRPG player, or you have already read the rules, the following 28 rules might be enough for you to play an entire game or campaign of Super Dead.

Characters

  1. Characters are defined by super powers and four attributes: athleticism, intellignece, personality, courage.
  2. To make an attribute save roll 1d10 under the attribute.
  3. To use your powers, roll your power die pool and look for one die above the target number.

Powers

  1. Powers can be used to create supernatural effects; all power uses must be narratively consistent.
  2. You can power surge to create particularly powerful effects, at the cost of stress.
  3. You can also power soak instead of taking a wound.
  4. If there is a question about whether a power could be used in a given way, err on the side of allowing a power surge attempt to decide.

Combat

  1. Combat takes place in rounds of three phases: movement, hand-to-hand, and shooting.
  2. During the movement phase, you can move 30 feet normally, or 100 feet recklessly.
  3. If you move into another's line of sight, they can make a ranged opportunity attack against you.
  4. During the hand-to-hand phase, up to three exchanges of hand-to-hand combat can take place for all combatants in immediate range of one another.
  5. During the shooting phase, each combatant outside immediate range may shoot at one target.

Wounds

  1. When you take damage, subtract your armor from the damage taken. If there is damage remaining, you take one wound for every three damage taken.
  2. There are four levels of wounds: healthy, hurt, wounded, disfigured.
  3. You recover from being hurt after each combat, and from being wounded after receiving medical attention.
  4. Wounds have lingering effects that last for up to 28 days.
  5. Disfigurement is permanent; if you would be disfigured in the same way twice, you die instead.

Stress

  1. Life in the apocalypse is stressful. You will accumulate stress when you do hard things.
  2. If you accumulate a point of stress, you must succeed at a courage save or crack.
  3. While cracked, everything is hard, and any time you try to use your powers, you must exceed both your target number and your stress number.
  4. You can relieve stress by doing relaxing or enjoyable activities and making a successful personality save.

Zombies

  1. Making noise attracts zombies and you are more likely to attract them at night.
  2. Zombies will move towards you as fast and directly as they can and attempt to bite you.
  3. If you get bitten you will likely (4/6) die.
  4. Dying may take (1/6) seconds, minutes (1/6), hours (1/6) or (1/6) days, depending on how the virus effects you.
  5. Encountering a horde of twnety of more zombies is terrifying and stressful.
  6. Though hordes may be defeated,through combat, your best is to run away or use environmental features.
  7. Anyone who finds themselves in immediate range of a zombie horde is devoured.